Learn why organizations across the supply chain and beyond incorporate checklists into their work.
Have you heard the urban legend from the 80s, about a rock star that demanded that every concert venue provide a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed? The story goes that a particular venue provided the M&Ms, but didn’t remove the brown ones. The rock star went berserk and then proceeded to do $80k worth of damage to the concert hall.
The story is actually true!1 But the details aren’t quite what you expect. There were brown M&Ms and that did result in $80k worth of damage, but it wasn’t the rock star’s fault. It was the venue’s failure to follow a checklist. Here’s how it all unfolded.
In 1982, Van Halen was touring the U.S., bringing with them a massive amount of sound equipment, lighting and other gear. Some of the venues they played were smaller and weren’t prepared to deal with the size and scale of Van Halen’s huge production.
Because of this, the band, like many other organizations, found a simple solution to managing massive complexity – a checklist. Van Halen had a massive contract rider. It spelled out, in detail, all the band’s requirements. It dictated everything from the minimum size of doors to the amperage and voltage of electrical connections. And yes, buried in the middle, it stipulated that a large bowl of M&Ms be provided with all the brown ones removed. If there were brown M&Ms, the band had the right to forfeit the show with full compensation.
The reason to put so much emphasis on the M&Ms was genius. When David Lee Roth went backstage upon arriving at a venue, he would immediately check the M&Ms. If he found brown ones, he knew that the promoter had taken his contract rider too casually (or may not have even read it in full) and they would need to double-check the entire list.
In Pueblo, CO, the staff at the venue provided the brown M&Ms, but they also weren’t really sure about the amount of weight their floor could support. Clearly, they hadn’t read the entire checklist carefully. Before all the details could be reassessed, it was too late. The stage sunk through the floor, causing $80k worth of damage. Van Halen proved a lesson that many businesses also learn the hard way: Checklists are only valuable when people use them.
The Van Halen example is just one of many unexpected applications of checklists in real-life scenarios from Atul Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto.2 Gawande identifies how doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, aviators, and financial advisors all incorporate checklists into their work.
With Acadia, we’ve seen tremendous success leveraging checklists among our manufacturing, distribution, and retail customers. Professionals in each of these domains have found that by applying checklists, they could be more productive, deliver consistent results, and continuously improve their processes.
There are two reasons we, as imperfect humans, screw things up. Either we don’t know the best way to do something, or we know the best way but fail to apply it.
Although practice and training can make us better at our work, the complexity of some tasks can still cause us to fail. How we feel on any given day, along with distractions in our lives and in the workplace also play a part in whether we perform at our best.
According to Gawande, the checklist provides a “cognitive net” that catches our mental flaws of memory, attention and thoroughness.
You may do something hundreds of times, and think you know it backward and forward. But that confidence may be exactly what makes you slip. When people feel too comfortable with a task, they start to take shortcuts. The result? Quality and productivity are often the first to suffer.
Checklists help with memory recall. They clearly identify the minimum steps necessary to complete the task. When developing a procedural checklist, keep it clear and concise, eliminating any ambiguity.
Finding the right balance between simplicity and effectiveness can be a challenge. Provide too little information and it won’t help. Provide too much and it won’t be used.
A good rule of thumb is to keep your checklist length to 5-9 items. This is the number of items a person can effectively manage in their working memory. Longer than that and people may try to take shortcuts.2
For more complicated procedures, you can join smaller checklists together into group checklists.
The most important step is to test your checklist in the real world, and be ready to make changes based on what your employees tell you. Study the results your procedure generates; did it perform as expected? Make adjustments until the checklist works consistently.
Getting people to use checklists can be tricky. Some employees may be offended by the suggestion that they need a checklist. People often resent strict protocol because of its perceived rigidity; they don’t like to envision themselves as mindless robots.
In reality, the opposite is true. The checklist gets the mindless, routine tasks under control. It allows your employees to focus their brain power on making improvements to the process. Remind your workforce that checklists are not complex how-to guides; they are quick and simple tools that support professionals in doing their best, most effective work.
When introducing checklists to employees, emphasize that the checklist is also a tool for them to send information back to management. By giving them control of improving processes and identifying unknown problems, you instill confidence and create a sense of ownership.
You can support greater engagement by allowing employees to help create and test the checklists before they become standard practice. Things are different when you’re writing lists versus using them, so the testing stage is key.
Another best practice is to use the same checklists in training as on the job. Introducing them from the beginning will help new employees trust the procedures more than their instincts.
When employees become accustomed to following your procedures in checklist form, it becomes easier to introduce changes. Small, simple changes can be easily adopted with practically no disruption. Larger changes and new procedures can be deployed with on-the-job training, including guidance on following the checklist to gain familiarity.
In Acadia, an established procedure can be instantly converted into an actionable task list. Automatic procedure compliance tracking is a practical advantage of deploying digital checklists over paper, helping you flag where problems may spring up before they take root.
Another key capability in Acadia is the opportunity for employees to provide feedback on any roadblocks that stopped them from performing the tasks as prescribed. This process lends itself to continuous improvement programs, making it part of the workflow instead of just a one-off exchange.
Over the last several years, we’ve collected feedback from our customers on how introducing digital checklists has improved their productivity. Here are just a few examples:
Does your company use checklists to support proper adherence to standard procedures? We’d love to hear about it. Contact us using the form below. [add contact form]
